Melania’s R.N.C. Speech Was a Hit Until We Realized She Stole It from Michelle Obama

Left, by Paul J. Richards, right, by Alex Wong, both from Getty Images.

“It would not be a Trump contest without drama and excitement,” Melania Trump said Monday night, cracking one of the first smiles of her 15-minute-long speech headlining the opening night of the Republican National Convention. Not long after she stepped offstage by her husband’s side, Melania found herself at the beating heart of that drama and excitement, when a journalist on Twitter pointed out that her remarks bore a striking resemblance to those delivered by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Pundits on cable news shows and across social media were mid-sentence, praising Melania for a speech she said earlier in the day she wrote herself and practiced for weeks, when they cocked their heads at the undeniable similarity.

The phrases in question had to do, ironically, with the values of hard work. “From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect. . . . Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them,” Melania said Monday evening. Roughly eight years ago, the now First Lady had said, “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do . . . we want our children—and all children in this nation—to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

The Trump campaign quickly spun the scandal, releasing a statement addressing the similarities: “In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking,” it read.

By Tuesday morning, what could have been—what almost was, or what was, for a few shining moments, anyway—a slam dunk for Melania, and an even bigger win for the Trump campaign, turned sour. The narrative was decided that Melania had plagiarized, and the only question was who was to blame and how the campaign would handle it. She can’t be fired. But she also can’t distance herself from the lines after claiming that she herself wrote it “with as little help as possible.”

Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort, poured cold water on the controversy in an interview on CNN early Tuesday. “There was no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech. These were common words and values,” he defended. “This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she tries, seeks out to demean her and take her down.”

How Manafort turned Melania Trump’s words, borrowed from Michelle Obama in front of tens of millions of people, into a problem for Hillary Clinton, is an impressive feat of political gymnastics. But it turns out there was, in fact, a Clinton connection. President Barack Obama’s former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, tweeted that the First Lady’s head speechwriter used to work for Clinton.

That Melania Trump’s big night turned into another example of the Trump campaign’s inability to hold onto on a positive news cycle seems sadder than most of the blunders that have plagued the billionaire’s ramshackle operation. Melania has openly, repeatedly said this is not a role she wanted, to stand in front of a stadium and the world talking about her private life. At times, that showed during her speech, before the controversy over her words broke out. When she stumbled over the teleprompter, for example, or when when the shade of recognition that she had mispronounced a word crept over her face, her eyes would widen from their typical smolder into a look of terror—a deer caught in front of a million headlines coming at her at full speed. This was a woman who has eschewed the spotlight; who claims to read everything “from A to Z”, but never mentions a single policy position; who has said she doesn’t discuss politics outside of the safety of her home, but on Monday, in prime time, found herself making a political speech broadcast all over the world.

But she was there, doing it anyway, terrified, it seemed, but also poised, well-rehearsed, and gleaming. Before it all came crashing down, it was hard not to feel respect for someone so outside her comfort zone. It wasn't the rallying cry to woo women voters that Trump operatives would have liked. It wasn't the insult-laden, endless drone her husband would have given, either. Neither was it Ann Romney recounting the specifics of her love affair with her husband (she mentioned not a single specific about her relationship with Donald) nor Michelle Obama in J. Crew (she appeared on stage in an immaculate white $2,190 dress). Perhaps that was a product of Melania's reticence, her desire to keep her relationship sacred in a campaign cycle in which nothing else is. Perhaps it is a result of her marriage, Donald’s third, being less a conventional love story and more reminiscent of the kind of arrangement not uncommon amongst billionaires and the models who wed them. Perhaps now that we know portions of it weren’t her story at all, it makes more sense.

Melania’s speech was unsatisfyingly unspecific and impersonal as a result. But it was, in a word she used to describe her mother in the speech, elegant. In its delivery, whether the sentiments were her own or belonging to the First Lady. A little class in a campaign completely devoid of it went a long way, for a moment at least, until the amateurish machinery of the Trump campaign dragged it back into the muck.